Law Enforcement Officials Not A Fan Of Apple’s Face ID Security

Security features like passcodes, fingerprint scanners, and facial recognition systems are designed to help protect our mobile devices against thieves and those who plan to pry into our private lives. Unfortunately it seems that these security measures aren’t looked upon favorably by law enforcement officials.

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In fact in a recent report from WTOP, it seems that police in Washington have expressed their frustration at Apple’s latest security feature launched with the iPhone X: Face ID. For those unfamiliar, Face ID is Apple’s take on facial recognition in which it relies on a bunch of sensors to help map and detect the user’s face to ensure that they are who they say they are, instead of a photograph trying to spoof the system.

According to Detective Jason Friedman from the Fairfax County Police computer forensics department, “It’s very frustrating for law enforcement because it makes our job much more difficult to support the community.” He adds, “Most of the forensics community in law enforcement has known for a while, through the Apple IOS 11 betas, that security was going to be even more difficult and hamper law enforcement’s ability to extract data.”

This is actually not the first time that law enforcement officials have expressed their displeasure at these security measures. Just last year there was a big fuss over the FBI trying to get Apple to unlock the phone belonging to a suspect, in which the agency reportedly spent over a million trying to unlock the device.